Narrow Results

Economic behaviour observed in experiments and in people's everyday dealings is often at variance with predictions and explanations based on standard theory. The findings of systematic patterns of such economic behaviour provide significant opportunities to extend the usefulness of economics. However, like the hesitation of participants in economic experiments to give up their coffee mugs, economists appear reluctant to take advantage of these opportunities.

The focus of this paper is on competition policy and law in the ASEAN countries. The paper begins with a descriptive evaluation of competition policy in the ASEAN countries. We then look at the effect of economic structure on the probability of early adoption of competition law among the ASEAN countries after which the competition laws of the ASEAN countries are evaluated in terms of objectives, jurisdictional exception, horizontal agreements, vertical agreements, definition and abuse of dominant position and mergers. We find that the competition laws of the four ASEAN countries that have implemented competition law are not completely harmonized.

The trajectory of Singapore's population size and composition can be mapped out with its progression through the various phases of demographic transition from high birth and death rates in the post-war years to very low birth and death rates today, all within the context of rapid economic and social development that has taken place in the past 50 years. Population planning has been integral in Singapore's national development strategy, balancing the economy's needs for more and better qualified workers with social considerations such as the dependency burden and the integration of large numbers of foreigners in a global city-state. This paper considers Singapore's population and manpower planning policies, with an account of the country's passage through the various stages of its demographic transition, and how its working age population composition has evolved. Population and labor force policies are examined with specific consideration of the social, economic and political implications resulting from those policy choices. A final section considers the challenges for the future stemming from these demographic trends.

With China’s rapidly aging population, this paper constructs a policy model using overlapping generation (OLG) model and the computable general equilibrium (CGE) modeling to analyze the second-child policy and delaying retirement policy. Our research findings suggest that considering the short-term effects, delaying the retirement age imposes a greater impact on the economy than the second-child policy. Its economic impact increases initially, but then decreases to a stable level showing a diminishing influence. In the long term, the second-child policy has greater ability to boost the economy than the delaying retirement age policy and its economic impact gets stronger. From an industrial output perspective, the two policies exert greater influence on agriculture, light industry, finance and service sector than on construction and heavy industries. From an industrial import and export perspective, the two policies have great influence on finance, electric power, and fossil energy more than they do on the agricultural sector. From a monetary perspective, the impacts are greater on household income followed by the government income and corporate income, respectively. The policies also make a bigger difference to fixed capital than to changes in deposits and loans.

The Vietnam economy has gained lots of achievements after the financial crisis 2007–2011, until it reached a low inflation rate of 0.6% in 2015. This paper measures the volatility of market risk in Vietnam banking industry after this period (2015–2017). The main reason is the vital role of the bank system in Vietnam in the economic development and growth in recent years always goes with risk potential and risk control policies.

This research paper aims to figure out the increase or decrease in the market risk of Vietnam banking firms during the post-low inflation period 2015–2017.

First, by using the quantitative combined with comparative data analysis method, we find out the risk level measured by equity beta mean in the banking industry is acceptable, although it is little higher than ($>$) 1.

Then one of its major findings is the comparison between risk level of banking industry during the financial crisis 2007–2009 compared to those in the post-low inflation time 2015–2017. In fact, the research findings show us market risk level during the post-low inflation time has increased much. We compare beta in two periods because we want to figure out the reason underlying the fact beta has increased. One of the reasons is that the accumulated banking risks during the longer time and criteria to meet Basel 2 have been partially contributing to increasing market risk.

Finally, this paper provides some ideas that could provide companies and government more evidence in establishing their policies in governance. This is the complex task but the research results show us warning that the market risk might be higher during the post-low inflation period 2015–2017. Our conclusion part will recommend some policies and plans to deal with it.

This chapter — among the few in the world — examined how well the households were prepared to contain COVID-19 in Vietnam under the first national social distancing in late April 2020 by mapping their related indicators presenting living conditions. It used the provincial data from Vietnam’s Population and Housing Census 2019. Following Jones et al. (2020)’s approach, it constructed various readiness indicators for households in 63 provinces/cities in Vietnam in order to see how they were ready for the social distancing period. The results showed that Vietnam’s social distancing in late April 2020 was successful because it was applicable and implementable along with readiness of all households with sufficient resources. At the provincial level, however, there were differences in readiness levels, in which some provinces were consistently lower than the other. As such, supplementing social assistance policies during the social distancing period was timely and appropriate. This chapter concluded that, given its position as a middle-income country with limited resources and a population of nearly 97 million, Vietnam has been among the few countries in the world to successfully contain COVID-19 in a short time. Early interventions and timely social assistance measures combined with house-holds’ readiness strongly determined Vietnam’s success.